PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 200 “The Importance of Brand Design”

Dec

28

One of the most important parts of running a business involves developing and maintaining your brand. While there are multiple definitions of what a brand is, in its simplest form, a brand is an immediately recognizable identity that differentiates itself from others. Having a clear brand for your company is especially vital for small businesses because it helps you establish credibility and trust with your target audience. For a small business, credibility and trust are crucial to long-term success.

Larger businesses will probably already have credibility built in because they’ve spent years growing and perfecting their brand. So, as a small business, making your brand clear to your customers will give you a competitive edge over other small businesses. One way that’ll help establish your brand is through brand attributes like your company’s logo. Whether you’re just starting or looking for a design refresh, we’ve got you covered! Starting at just $200 a logo, you can get a professional brand logo at an affordable price. Get started by heading over to our Brand and Graphic Design page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #brand #branding #business #businesstips #design #digitalmarketing #graphicdesign #logo #logodesign #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #technology #web #webdesign #website

Dreamersi WebdeMail Online Webmail Updates!

Dec

27

To increase overall security for our users, we will be updating WebdeMail, our webmail platform (running Cent OS7 + Roundcube 1.4) by replacing it with the latest version (running Alma Linux8 + Roundcube 1.6). There will be less than one minute of downtime for these updates when accessing WebdeMail, but it won't have any impact on sending/receiving.

Date and Time

*US Pacific Standard Time (PST)

- December 28, 10:00 - 10:30 a.m.

*Japan Standard Time (JST)

- December 28, 2:00 - 2:00 a.m.

In this update, we will:

Add a new Mailvelope extension plugin (available for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) option that helps encrypt your emails. Install it manually at Mailvelope.com.

Add a deletion period for emails in your Trash when you log out, with the option to:

Never clear your Trash upon logging out.
Clear all messages in your Trash when logging out.
Clear messages older than 30 days when logging out.
Clear messages older than 60 days when logging out.
Clear messages older than 90 days when logging out.

Add a “Business (Work)” contact form option, which lets you add "Organization", "Department" and "Job Title" when adding new contacts after selecting the "Business (Work)" contact form mode.
Add a “Collected Addresses” feature, which automatically saves an email recipient to an address book. It also lets you automatically save an email address after selecting the “Always allow from” pop-up option, which will appear in an email with remote content. That email address will then appear in the new “Trusted Senders” address book. Both “Collected Addresses” and “Trusted Senders” address books will now appear in your contact groups.

collected recipients and trusted senders folders

Add the ability to copy contacts from new groups like “Collected Addresses”.
Move “On request for read receipt” to “Displaying Messages” (previously under “Mailbox View”).

on request for read receipts to displaying messages

Remove the Spellcheck feature as many browsers and smartphones already have this feature built in.

If you have any questions about these changes or require more assistance, please email us at contact@pspinc.com or call us toll-free at 1-800-232-3989.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customersupport #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #hosting #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webtools

The 5 Biggest Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2024

Dec

26

As this year comes to a close, we’re reflecting on how marketing has evolved over the past year and how we can improve for next year, not only for our company but for our customers as well. When looking back, one thing’s for certain: advancements in technology are driving the trends that will only become even more popular next year. Here are five of the biggest marketing trends to look out for in 2024.

1. AI Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasing trend over the past few years in multiple industries, but many marketers have also jumped on the bandwagon. Marketers have started using AI to create content and to take advantage of how AI integration analyzes data, personalizes customers’ experiences, and optimizes campaigns. Integrating AI into marketing strategies also helps hyper-personalize content, which has gained popularity over the past year.

But as helpful as AI technology has been to the marketing industry, it’s important not to employ a “set it and forget it” type of strategy. It’s still a largely developing technology, so there are still times when it’ll get things wrong, so it’s better to use AI integration in a more collaborative approach.

2. Video Marketing

person recording a video with their phone

As we’ve mentioned before, video marketing, especially short-form video marketing, has become more popular over the past few years. The rise of TikTok, Facebook/Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts made this clear. Other video marketing tactics that have also shown great success include live streaming and interactive video content. For more tips, check out our blog post all about how to start marketing with short-form videos.

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

a person presenting user-generated content results to a marketing team

One of the best ways to build credibility, increase user engagement, and foster a sense of community online is through user-generated content (UGC), which just refers to content your customers share about you online. This usually involves encouraging customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media through a specific hashtag or throwing contests where the best entry wins. But there are other ways to garner content from your customers.

Customer reviews, either on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or any other platform, also count as user-generated content. It just takes a little more work to share it on social media since it isn’t already on the same platform. You can either take a screenshot and resize it for social media, or you can add it into a template of sorts from a site like Canva to share with your social media followers.

4. Social Shopping

Over the past year especially, selling and shopping directly on social media has only become more accessible with Facebook Marketplace, Instagram’s buy button, and TikTok Shop. It’s pushed social shopping more toward social media, being an e-commerce ecosystem all on its own. With social shopping already gaining popularity, marketers expect this will significantly impact the online shopping landscape.

5. Privacy and Data Protection

One of the largest growing concerns among customers today consists of protecting their data, thanks to the uptick in cybercrimes over the past few years. Because of this, customers are much more informed and vigilant about how others handle their data and how they share their data. On the business side, it’s important to implement secure data collection and storage practices to protect your employees’ accounts, which is easy to do with a password manager like Pass Wizard. On the consumer-facing side, businesses should be very transparent about their data collection and storage practices and obtain explicit consent when collecting user data.

With how fast technology evolves today, there are bound to be many more marketing trends coming next year that we haven’t anticipated. However, our team here at PSPINC has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #data #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingonline #marketingtips #passwordmanager #sales #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #ugc #usergeneratedcontent #videomarketing #web #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 199 “Starter Web Design Plan Now on Sale!”

Dec

21

The new year is the perfect time to give your website an update to make sure it continues performing well and helps reach your business goals. So, why not get your site custom-designed? While it’s easy to use a popular website builder, it also traps your website into looking very similar to many others on the market. With a custom design, you not only stick out amongst your competitors, but it also lets you add design elements and features that may not be included in the multitude of popular templates and gives you more opportunity to add more of your business’s branding to your website.

That’s why we’re now offering $200 off our Starter web design plan for the holidays! With our Starter plan, get:

Ten custom pages
WebdeXpress (our website builder) or WordPress template selection
One-year web hosting with SSL certificate included
Contact form
Mobile-friendly
Social media integration
One additional language
20% off web updates for one year

With over 36 years of experience helping hundreds of customers grow their online business, our designers and developers at PSPINC have the expertise you need. Get started by heading over to our web design page and get $200 off our Starter web design plan now.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #designer #developer #ecommerce #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdexpress #webhosting #website #websites #wordpress

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 198 “New Dreamersi Email Hosting Features and Updates"

Dec

14

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added a new feature for our Dreamersi email hosting customers! To improve your email account’s overall security, we’ve implemented a new DKIM authentication feature! DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) authentication is designed to guarantee the authenticity of an email sender.

Benefits of DKIM Authentication

Confirms a sender’s legitimacy
Enhances your email’s security
Improves the overall reliability of your emails
Protects you from spam and phishing attacks

Since the default setting is off, you can turn on this new feature by:

Logging in to your Dreamersi admin panel
Clicking on the Spam Filter tab
Enabling the DKIM Authentication feature

If you’re looking for an email that doesn’t appear in your Inbox and find it in the Mail Recovery page (in the left sidebar) instead, it may be because the email failed the DKIM authentication. In case you need it, you can move it to your Inbox by selecting the Recover checkbox.

DNS Changes for Outgoing DMARC

woman in gray blazer sitting in front of a gray laptop computer

In addition to adding a DKIM authentication feature, we’ve also adopted Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC), an email security protocol that lets senders control how their email handles sent messages that fail DKIM authentication by implementing DMARC measures.

Benefits of DMARC:

Transparency and improved delivery rates: DMARC gives users more control over how to handle emails that fail DKIM authentication. With DMARC, you can choose to “Do nothing”, “Quarantine”, or “Reject”, giving users more transparency over the email authentication process and reducing the risk of spam filters catching legitimate emails.
Enhanced security: if a third party sends a spoofed email, DMARC will likely catch it with the help of DKIM authentication and senders can receive those results, protecting your email from potential cyber threats.
Increased reliability: DMARC can reveal a sender’s origin, which helps maintain email accounts’ overall security, assuring emails are coming from a legitimate source.

These settings will help further enhance the security and overall reliability of your emails. If you wish to use DMARC, please contact our support team by emailing us at contact@pspinc.com or calling us at 1-800-232-3989 to set up the necessary DNS records.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #dkim #dmarc #dns #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #marketing #newsletter #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webdevelopment #webtools

Custom Design and Development Showcase: Payroll Solutions Inc.

Dec

12

Payroll Solutions Inc. is a payroll service provider in the Pacific Northwest, founded in 2005 and now serves hundreds of clients throughout the U.S. Their services include payroll management, workforce management services, and employee time management services. They came to us looking for a visual rebranding and an improved organizational structure for their navigation bar and content, while incorporating their branding and color scheme, with a focus on leveraging their branding attributes, which consist of:

Delivering the best payroll services for small and mid-sized businesses
Always having a customer-centric mindset – focusing on their client’s needs and businesses and providing an exceptional experience.

So, to help them, we fully custom-designed their website by:

Rebuilding the website with WordPress with a fully custom theme
Redesigning their website
Integrating a client resource portal
Following branding guidelines, verbiage, and logo usage
Improving their website’s organizational structure – especially for their navigation bar and content
Leveraging their branding and color scheme
Redesigning their icon
Improving their previous sitemap

Now, if you go to PayrollSolutionsWA.com, you’ll find a fully responsive website that works on all device types. If you’re looking to custom-design your website, you’re in luck! Our Starter plan is now $799 ($200 off the regular price!). Or choose from one of our other budget-friendly web design plans by heading to our web design page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #ecommerce #marketing #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websitebuilder #websites #wordpress

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 197 “Localize for English and Japanese-Speaking Customers”

Dec

7

For over 20 years now, we’ve been localizing content for small businesses looking to market toward both English-speaking customers and Japanese-speaking customers. Beyond just translating, we also build custom web applications, design and develop websites, and create digital marketing assets like social media posts using our localization expertise.

Our team at PSPINC knows it’s about more than just translating the words; it’s also about translating the meaning behind those words. That is the core of the localization work we’ve done for the past two decades, and what we continue to do even today. If you’re not quite sure of where to start, we always start with a consultation between you and our localization team before embarking on our project together. Learn more by heading over to our localization page on our website.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #content #design #development #digitalmarketing #localization #marketing #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website #websites

Bloguru Legacy Themes to be Discontinued

Dec

5

"Picnic Blanket" is used on this blog.

Thank you for using Bloguru.

As recent statistics show, more than 80% of people now access the internet from their smartphones. For those of you who are long-term Bloguru users, we have kept the legacy themes, which are not mobile-friendly. However, in this smartphone era, we believe that we should move toward more responsive designs that are compatible with smartphones.

Advantages of responsive design:
・Mobile-friendly, making it easy to view on a smartphone
・Easy-to-read text on all devices
--> Better user experience and lots of views!

Therefore, we are pleased to announce that we have decided to discontinue the legacy themes after January 8th, 2024 PST.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we would like to ask you to change to one of the Responsive themes before then.

If you are using one of the Legacy themes as of January 7th, we will automatically switch your blog to the "Picnic Blanket" theme.

-------------------
To change the theme:

1. Log in to Bloguru.
2. Click on "Themes" from the navigation at the top of the page.
3. Click on the "Responsive" tab.
4. After finding a theme you like, click on it.
*Click to apply the design you have selected. There is no "Save" button.
-------------------

If you have any questions, please contact us by emailing bloguru@pspinc.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 196 “Benefits of Custom Web Development”

Nov

30

While it’s more costly, custom web development is well worth it in the end because of how beneficial it is for your brand. Custom web development benefits businesses, especially small businesses by:

1. Increasing security: Businesses can implement robust security measures to keep their data safe from cyber-attacks with the help of custom web development.

2. Giving businesses the ability to scale over time with their website: A successful business doesn’t stay the same forever, so their website shouldn’t either. Custom web development makes it easier to adapt to how your business and website change over time.

3. Tailoring to your brand: While there are multiple popular website builders and templates out there, custom web development allows for more branding opportunities and gives the website a personalized touch that templates just can’t offer.

4. Creating custom features: Every business is unique in what it offers, the customers they have, and what they need to succeed. Custom web development makes it possible for features that aren’t readily available on popular web builders.

5. Increasing search engine optimization (SEO): With more control over the website, developers can create the site with SEO in mind, which makes it easier for your site to rank higher organically in search engine results.

At PSPINC, we’ve worked with small businesses for decades to custom-develop websites to help them succeed. To request custom development from us, head over to our Web and App Development page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webdexpress #websitebuilder #webtools #wordpress

What is Web Hosting?

Nov

28

Web hosting refers to providing storage space and access to websites. In other words, web hosting acts like a space where websites store their files so users can view them online. So, every website you’ve ever been on is hosted on a server.

There are three types of hosting:

Shared: consists of one server where multiple websites share resources in equal proportions

Dedicated: offers end users all the hardware resources of a given server instead of sharing them like in shared hosting

VPS hosting: stands for virtual private server and is like a mix of the two, where a single virtual machine on a piece of physical hardware is shared with other virtual machines with levels of performance, flexibility, and control that fit somewhere between what shared and dedicated hosting offers.

Features Worth Considering

When choosing what features you need for your website, start by looking at what each type of hosting plan offers. Paid plans will generally have additional features that make it easier to manage your site as opposed to a free plan, which has the basics needed to get a website online. The more a web hosting plan costs, the more features there will be. But all you really need to keep in mind are these three aspects of your web hosting plan: speed, support, and scalability.

In terms of speed, multiple factors affect your website’s speed—one of which is your web hosting plans, and if your site takes longer than two seconds to load, generally, a user won’t stay on your site. When it comes to support, it’s important to know that your web hosting provider can get your site up and back up and running quickly if it were to unexpectedly go down. Lastly, there’s scalability. Your plan might work for you now, but as your site gets more traffic, you’ll want to upgrade your plan–your web hosting provider needs to have that option available for you to grow.

There is a myriad of choices when it comes time to buy web hosting, and PSPINC is one of them! Dreamersi is our premiere web hosting option that we’ve fully custom-built in-house, making it easier to control the overall hosting environment and features we’ve built into it. To learn more, head over to Dreamersi.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customersupport #dreamersi #emailhosting #hosting #marketing #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #video #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websites #webtools #youtube

PSPINC Official Company Blog

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What’s New Newsletter Vol. 200 “The Importance of Brand Design”

Dreamersi WebdeMail Online Webmail Updates!